1959 - 1960

When Harrison joined The Les Stewart Quartet they had been booked to play as a resident band soon after at a new club called ‘The Casbah’.  Ken Brown helped decorate the new club which caused upset between a few band members and Les Stewart refused to play there.  As a result of this, Ken and George walked out of the group and George got in touch with John and Paul, reuniting ‘The Quarry Men’ as a quartet.  After the newly formed band played over 5 gigs at the club, Ken Brown left the group after a disagreement.  For about 4 months between October 1959 and January 1960 John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison continued to play as a trio and they called themselves ‘Johnny & the Moondogs’.

Both the band and John Lennon knew they needed a bass player so he asked two student friends in ‘The Liverpool College of Art’ where he attended if they would like the position.  In January 1960 Stuart Sutcliffe sold one of his paintings to a John Moores exhibition in order to buy a bass guitar to play in the group John had asked him to join.  By this time the group had changed its name to the ‘Silver Beetles’.

In addition to the new recruit and name change they also began changing drummers around, starting with Tommy Moore who toured with the group in Scotland then left.  After this was Norman Chapman who left just after a few weeks and finally George Harrison suggested that Pete Best, (the son of Casbah club owner Mona Best) should become the group’s drummer.

McCartney contacted Pete Best and offered him the drummer seat, he took it.  Following on from this the group finally settled on the name ‘The Beatles’ just before their first trip to Hamburg in the middle of 1960.

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